Pasadena

On my way home from work I was thinking. Too deeply for driving, as it turned out, because I thought about how complicated the act of driving a car is. An old friend of mine pointed out once that "It's really amazing. We're these animals, these creatures, whose brains are capable of keeping track of the speed and motion of a number of other vehicles. While at the same time performing the tasks necessary to keep our own vehicle on the road. All of this at high speed, and we manage to (most of the time) drive safely within three feet of every other car."

And I wondered, am I really? I became sharply aware of each movement I made. Each motion became unique and separate from the next. Adjusting my speed was a matter of first lifting my foot slightly from the gas pedal. Then holding my foot still for a time. Then touching my foot back on the pedal. Then applying slight pressure in order to maintain my new speed. Nothing was fluid.

After a few minutes of that, I began to mark the individual motions of the car as well. How it shifted slightly to the right each time I took my hands from the wheel to shift. I should get my alignment checked. And how there is a slight shuddering each time I shift gears. I should get my transmission checked. Each time the blinker clicked was a unique and individual moment. Nothing was in series. Nothing was fluid.
The trees passed by slowly, and I lost control for no more than three seconds. My eyes were open in the right lane. I blinked. and my eyes were open five hundred yards down the road in the left lane.

I dropped the subject with myself and allowed my brain to go on unwatched. It seemed safer.

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Edit on Oct 22, 2008:
Thanks to Spider Robinson/Robert A. Heinlein (can't be sure which, the crafty bastards), I now know that what I described here is called "the Centipede's Dilemma."

once the centipede got to pondering just how he managed all those legs, he couldn't do it anymore.
-Spider Robinson, Variable Star (with Robert A.
Heinlein.), p.110